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Talking to an old PTZ camera

I recently obtained an old Polycom PTZ-1 camera. This camera went to an old video conferencing system, long past it’s usefulness in today’s era of instant desktop video conferencing ala Skype. The camera was inside a large plastic housing to keep it secure– I removed it from the housing to get a closer look.

Below is the Arduino sketch that I’m using. The code will pan and tilt the camera using the plus-pad. The A and B buttons control zoom in and out. Select and Start are for presets. The camera has 8 hardware presets. Press select the number of times equal to the preset you want and press start. To set a preset, press select the number of times equal to the preset, holding on the last preset and press start.

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4 thoughts on “Talking to an old PTZ camera”

Humby

March 9, 2012 at 1:14pm

Hey do you still have this sketch? I’ve recently gotten one of these cameras and would like to have my arduino uno talk to it. The code above references “SerialExtension.h” can you post the h and ccp files or point me to their source? I found this thread http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php/topic,15615.0.html but that code is not working for me.

admin

March 9, 2012 at 3:46pm

The SerialExtension you found on the link is the same one I used. It’s most likely the code no longer compiles on the later versions of the Arduino IDE (one my of biggest complaints). Try getting an older version.

Humby

March 10, 2012 at 7:57pm

My bad, I noticed 10 min. after I hit submit that the link you posted was the same one I looked at too.. I think I just found the one on the new forum. Any chance you remember which Ardunio IDE version you used? I went all the way back to 17 since that was release around the same time as your original post. If not that’s cool. I’ve got a feeling it’s a matter of either importing the correct library that sets those variables or maybe just setting them manually.

Turner delacruz

December 27, 2015 at 4:43pm

Hi my name is Turner’s dela Cruz I have a Clinton electric PTZ camera model CCC 991 IR this camera did not come with rs485 wires the wiring harness it has was cut the only thing that was left was a BNC cable that says video on it also there is two more wires are red and black I open the PTZ dome camera and did a continuity test on them I don’t know much about PTZ cameras I don’t know if this camera is 12 volt or 24 volt but I look at the requirements online and it said either one I don’t know if it’s 12 volt just the camera or 24 volt a PTZ camera so what I’m asking is if you could help me get my PTZ camera running it does not have rs-485 wires I have a DVR made by night owl and it has a built in room remote on the DVR also I need to know the code to put on the DIP switches inside the camra for the Night Owl DVR